This Is What You've Been Looking For

A Lucid Dream in the Fourth Hour.

Place: Campus Housing, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, my Living Room

Date & Time: August 21, 2013, around 4:00 AM

My State: I was in a lucid dream while partly awake, partly asleep. It was a long day at the lab. Finished dinner. I was studying ancient history and civilizations through Wikipedia articles whole night, that I have been doing for few years of intense study. Tired. Restless. Unsatisfied with the current state of things. I had been up all night, sitting on a couch to relax before going to the bed. In the pre-dawn stillness, I sat awake within a dream. I was not sure if I was even dreaming. I only realized I had been sleeping for a some time (~20-30 min) later when I woke up.

The Dream.

Setup and Stage: A tribunal in a silent living room.

Seated before me was the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), about 60 years old. His face was tanned white, bright, and beaming with wisdom. He had a few wrinkles in his skin from a sixty-year eventful life. He had a full, greying beard that bore witness to his long experience. His demeanor was calm yet forbearing; he did not raise his voice, but his countenance inspired fear in everyone in the room. He sat as if he were about to judge someone for a crime. As a witness, I looked around to find out who the defendant was and what their crime might be. But no defendant was in the room.

Then, a man appeared, walking silently (without any sound of footsteps) and stood in front of the Prophet. He looked like a youth, 25-30 years old, lean, with a beard as dark as ink, partly curly. His eyes were black, with a piercing sharpness. He had no cap, turban, or robe on his head; just dark black, partly curly, long hair. Even though he was brought as a defendant for to be judged, he was not worried, but rather pleasantly ashamed of the trial. His skin complexion was fresh, youthful, and fair, with zero wrinkles, blemishes, moles, marks, or scars. On his lips, a smile bloomed—bashful and ashamed, like a new bridegroom, ashamed to be brought to this trial. He was the only person standing in the room.

In that moment, the Prophet spoke. His voice was not a strike of thunder but a Gentle Admonishing Inquiry. The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) spoke: 

"Why did you allow yourself to be called a Son of God, when God made you a Perfect Servant?"

Then suddenly my lucid dream was gone, and I found myself sitting on the couch in my living room. In my head, I was still hearing the echoes of the gentle yet firm voice of the Prophet, saying, "Why did you allow yourself to be called a Son of God, when God made you a Perfect Servant?" With one statement, in perfect eloquence, he simultaneously identified the defendant, his alleged crime, the admonishment, and the resolution of the trial. 

After the "lucid" encounter with powerful presences, I faithfully wrote down what I saw, nothing more and nothing less. I bear witness, in the Name of Allah, that what I wrote is what I saw in the dream. May Allah bless you with the wisdom to understand it.

Writing place: Campus Housing, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, my Living Room

Date: August 21, 2013, 5:00 AM

Footnote:

I rarely used that couch for sitting. I never used it for sleeping. It was more like a living room decoration. I always sleep in my bed in the bedroom. I bought that couch for 40 dollars as the very first item from a "Craigslist-for-students" type of furniture merchant when I first came to the USA, before I bought my bed. This kind of couch (a single-person sofa, called an armchair or accent chair in the USA) was not available in Bangladesh (or at least I was not aware of them when I was there; nowadays, they should be available). I gave it to myself as a gift because the deal was so good, and I liked the couch so much that I was happy to spend just $40.

For the past few years, since arriving in the USA, I had experienced solitude in Bloomington when I was doing my graduate work in Neuroscience, doing animal dissection, setting up electrophysiology rigs, and collecting raw experimental data. Feeling the absence of a Bengali friend, I started a habit of writing my ideas, dreams, and inspirations in a diary. My writing started after a few years of pondering things. After a year or so, the lucid dream came. This was not the first time I had seen the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). I saw him when I was a child and told my father and mother about it. The dream was clear but not theological in nature. In my first dream, I distinctly saw his face. He appeared youthful, without a beard, and possessed an athletic physique. He was happily relaxing and swimming in a pool of crystal-clear water (a swimming pool). However, my father and mother did not inquire about any details of the dream or what it was all about. They just told me it's a blessing to see the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) and that I should just remember the dream, not forget it. To this day, I have never shared these dreams with anyone. But as I am getting older, I think I need to share the dreams to someone who has ears to hear.